Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon

by James Hibberd

  First there was the sheer number of roles. Thrones’ debut season had dozens of speaking parts and twenty core cast members, or “series regulars.” Tougher still, many of these roles were for children. Finding one excellent child actor can be hard enough. Thrones needed six Stark kids who could look and act like a cohesive family while also handling adult content and making a years-long commitment to the show.

  Though HBO gave Thrones a generous budget (roughly $20 million was eventually spent on the pilot and then another $54 million on the rest of the season), the money was needed to build out Martin’s new fantasy universe. When you create sets for a period drama set in medieval times, or in ancient Egypt or Rome, you can replicate designs from a historical record. Every set, costume, and prop in Martin’s books needed to be unique. For instance, Martin describes the seat of power in Westeros, the Iron Throne, as a towering monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges; twisted metal forged from a thousand swords into a piece of furniture so jagged and uncomfortable that it can literally kill a person (and has). How do you adapt that description into a realistic-looking chair that blends with its environment and that actors can sit in for hours during filming?

  Then there were all the computer-generated (CG) special effects—far fewer than in the show’s latter seasons, but almost certainly more effects than any other TV show at the time.

  So there wasn’t much left in the budget for hiring a lot of well-known stars. The producers would instead have to largely cast Thrones the hard way—by hunting through thousands of audition tapes.

  “On paper, Game of Thrones is the stupidest idea on the planet to invest in,” noted actor Liam Cunningham, who came on board in season two to play Davos Seaworth. “To have a production hanging on nine-year-old children in the pilot to get you through the rest of the show eleven years later.”

  Filling at least one major role seemed like it would be rather easy (because the perfect actor was obvious), but it was also nerve-wracking (because he wasn’t initially interested). Tyrion Lannister, the cunning and sarcastic black sheep of the powerful Lannister family, is a fan favorite from Martin’s books. Peter Dinklage was considered the ideal choice, as evidenced by his work in The Station Agent and his scene-stealing roles in Elf and Living in Oblivion.

  Yet Dinklage was coming off another fantasy role in 2008’s Prince Caspian, Disney’s modestly performing sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and was looking for something different. Dinklage was also wary of the genre’s stereotypical use of little people. He once cited The Lord of the Rings’ infamous dwarf-tossing joke as particularly galling and would later use his first Golden Globes acceptance speech in 2012 to draw attention to a real-life dwarf-tossing victim.

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (author, co–executive producer): We thought right away that role would be the trickiest. We all agreed we wanted an actual dwarf to play Tyrion; we didn’t want to do what Lord of the Rings did where they take John Rhys-Davies and shrink him down to play Gimli. If Peter had turned us down we would have been screwed.

  PETER DINKLAGE (Tyrion Lannister): I wouldn’t go anywhere near that stuff—fantasy. As soon as I heard about [Thrones] I was like, “No.” In fantasy, everybody speaks in broad strokes. There’s no intimacy. There’s dragons and big speeches, and there’s nothing to hold on to. And for somebody my size, it’s fucking death, the opposite of [the activism] I was involved with.

  But Dinklage knew and respected showrunner David Benioff’s writing, and it didn’t hurt that the actor was friends with Benioff’s wife, actress Amanda Peet. So when Dinklage read the Thrones pilot script, he had a change of heart.

  PETER DINKLAGE: David and Dan are incapable of doing [fantasy tropes]; they’re too good. I told them that I love turning people’s expectations on their heads. You overcome stereotypes when people least expect it. You do it quietly. You don’t do it through a bullhorn. And I felt like that’s what they were doing with Tyrion. In another show it would be focused on the people on the throne looking down on me.

  Dinklage had at least one rule: no beard, which is why Tyrion is clean-shaven during the show’s first few years despite the character having a beard in the books. The actor later eased off that requirement and grew a modest beard after his character was firmly established. “I just didn’t want a long beard in a dwarf–in–The Lord of the Rings way,” he explained.

  The actor also urged his longtime friend Lena Headey (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) to try out for the role of Tyrion’s ambitious and cunning sister, Cersei. “We met lots of others too, but it was clear she was the most interesting and best choice,” said Nina Gold, who served as Thrones’ casting director along with her partner Robert Sterne.

  While the producers were looking to stand apart from The Lord of the Rings, they nonetheless cast Sean Bean in the role of the honorable Stark patriarch Eddard (a.k.a. Ned). Bean had played another ill-fated fantasy warrior from a noble family, Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring. “Sean was somebody we talked about from the very beginning; he seemed like the prototype of the Guy,” said Gold.

  Dinklage would be the show’s only American actor for most of the series. Gold and Sterne searched for the rest of the roles out of London. Westeros was based on what’s now known as the UK, and there was a long tradition of historical-style dramas using actors with British accents. Benioff, Weiss, and Martin were heavily involved in the selection process, as was the director of the series’ original pilot, Tom McCarthy, who was brought on board having previously directed Dinklage in The Station Agent as well as acted with Peet in the film 2012.

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: I was a big part of casting in the early seasons. They would send me a link every day with like twenty-three different people who read for various roles. I would watch every one of them. I would write David and Dan these really detailed six-page evaluations.

  Also weighing in on casting—unofficially—were Martin’s readers. A Song of Ice and Fire fans lobbied online for certain actors to be considered for key roles, sometimes quite successfully. The fans were also quick to make their disapproval known when a casting choice fell short of their expectations for a character—such as when Danish film star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau landed the role of Cersei’s legendarily handsome and arrogant knight brother, Jaime Lannister.

  NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU (Jaime Lannister): I had a meeting with Dan and David and Carolyn Strauss, and they told me the whole story and it sounded amazing. Then about a half hour into the conversation they said, “Oh, yeah, he has a special relationship with his sister—they’re lovers.” I thought that was interesting. Then there was some discussion [among fans] about my nose—that I had the wrong nose.

  DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): We learned to cast the actor who was best for the role, not whose face matches whose in the books. That means we got certain complaints in the fan community. People complained Peter was too tall and that Nikolaj’s nose was too big. [Theon Greyjoy actor Alfie Allen] doesn’t look anything like the character in the book, but his audition blew everybody else out of the water.

  Allen didn’t originally think he would make a great Theon either. The English actor first tried out to play Jon Snow, and producers were inspired to ask him to come back and read for the role of the traitorous Stark ward (this wasn’t unusual, as many Thrones actors tried out for multiple parts on the show).

  Yet Martin’s fans scored a bull’s-eye by suggesting Jason Momoa, an American actor best known for Stargate: Atlantis, for the role of the fearsome Dothraki warrior Khal Drogo.

  Momoa arrived at his audition wearing an open black chest-baring shirt and a tribal-looking necklace. Given Drogo’s lack of dialogue, Momoa asked producers if he could perform a Maori-warrior haka dance to visually demonstrate some of his physical menace before reading his lines. The actor furiously stomped, chanted, and pounded his chest while giving a threatening Drogo-like glare.

  JASON MOMOA (Khal Drogo): I was born to play this role. When I
read they were casting Khal Drogo, I couldn’t believe it was happening. I had to have that role. I’ve never gone out for something before where I was like, “No one is going to take this from me.” I was pretty adamant about it. I just remember giving it my all and leaving it going, “Good luck finding someone who’s going to play Drogo.”

  Northern Ireland television and theater veteran Conleth Hill tried out to play the bald eunuch royal advisor Varys, despite some initial reluctance.

  CONLETH HILL (Varys): I resisted for so long. I remember telling my agent I wasn’t interested. I thought it would be like Dungeons & Dragons. But Belfast was only an hour away and I loved Tom McCarthy’s movies, so I figured I would go meet them. I taped for King Robert, but when I came out, I saw Mark Addy was up for that part as well. I knew he was perfect, so I thought that was a no-go.

  The producers said, “We’ll come back to you.” I thought that was bullshit—nice bullshit, but bullshit. Then they had me back in again doing Varys’s big speech where he talks about his past. I was thinking, “What a journey for this character.” They asked, “Do you mind getting your head shaved?” I had never shaved my head before, and [at first] I was very depressed.

  For Scottish actor Rory McCann, landing the role of Prince Joffrey Baratheon’s fearsome bodyguard Sandor “the Hound” Clegane wasn’t just another acting gig but a matter of actual survival. The actor told The Independent in 2019 that before being cast on Thrones, he was homeless, sleeping in a tent, and stealing food.

  DAVID BENIOFF: We had trouble finding someone for the Hound. That’s a tricky role. It’s gotta be someone who’s genuinely intimidating but who you also believe has a soul. Nina and her team would put all these videos online and there were hundreds of Hound interviews. Then we got an email from George saying, “Have you looked at Rory McCann?” We clicked on that one. It’s when he’s yelling at Sansa and goes: “Look at me!”—the way he snarled at camera made us both [lean back]. Rory is a very sweet, gentle person, but he definitely has that anger within him.

  Northern Ireland actor Kristian Nairn was tapped for the role of hulking yet sweet, mono-word-uttering House Stark servant Hodor.

  KRISTIAN NAIRN (Hodor): I was in the middle of my day and got a phone call from a guy who had acted as my agent saying, “We have an audition for you. You need to find a child.” I obviously didn’t have one with me. But he told me about a birthday party where one would be.

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: Then we got this tape of Kristian Nairn and he’s in a backyard staggering around with a kid on his back, shouting, “Hodor!”

  German actress Sibel Kekilli paid out of pocket to fly to London for the opportunity to audition for Tyrion’s wily prostitute lover Shae in person. After the meeting, however, Kekilli changed her mind about the role. The script pages she’d read during the scene were originally closer to the book’s portrayal of Shae as a heartless opportunist, and she felt uncomfortable playing such a character opposite Dinklage.

  SIBEL KEKILLI (Shae): When I got the part, my first reaction was I didn’t want do it. I said, “No, thank you!” I knew Peter Dinklage was a great actor, but I was thinking [based on the audition lines] that they wanted to make fun of little people—make fun of the situation. David and Dan sent me a beautiful letter saying, “Please-please-please, you are our Shae. You did a great audition and we’re going to change Shae a bit. We’ll do it different than the books,” and they convinced me.

  Scottish actor Iain Glen already had some Hollywood genre-movie experience thanks to major roles in films such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider when he tried out for banished Westerosi knight Ser Jorah Mormont.

  IAIN GLEN (Jorah Mormont): No one knew anything really about it except that it was HBO and so many [British actors] were going out for it. I met with them, felt pretty good about it, then it all went silent. I said to my wife—and I never usually say this—“I really, really want that job.” She asked why. “Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “Because I know nothing about it. I just got a funny feeling. . . .”

  For the pivotal role of exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen, the producers originally cast English actress Tamzin Merchant, who was coming off Showtime’s period drama The Tudors. Daenerys was one of several younger characters that had been slightly reconceived to fit the chosen actor.

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: I based the books on the Middle Ages, when girls were getting married at thirteen. The entire concept of adolescence didn’t exist; you were either a child or an adult. So Dany is thirteen years old in the books. But it was against British law to cast anyone in a sexual situation who is under seventeen. You can’t even cast a seventeen-year-old to play a thirteen-year-old if it’s a sexual situation. So we wound up with a twenty-three-year-old playing a seventeen-year-old and had to adjust the timeline.

  For bullying teenage prince Joffrey, producers auditioned many young actors who read their lines as an obvious “demon seed,” an Omen-like child villain.

  DAVID BENIOFF: We were auditioning for Joffrey, and we found a kid we thought was perfect, so we thought we were done with that role. Then we went to Dublin to cast for other characters and there was one kid who had been scheduled to read for Joffrey and we didn’t want to cancel on him. So basically, just as a courtesy, we agreed to see Jack Gleeson. He started speaking and changed our concept of the character. We didn’t expect to spend as much time with Joffrey until we cast Jack. There’s something so loathsome yet so believable about [the performance]. He’s not supernatural, he’s not the servant of darkness, he’s just a believably awful human being.

  Seventeen-year-old Gleeson’s most notable prior credit was a small part in Batman Begins. The young Irish actor said he had looked to other big-screen villains for inspiration.

  JACK GLEESON (Joffrey Baratheon): My characterization came from those first sides that I got and a collection of evil characters I’ve seen over the years. Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus in Gladiator had a big impact—the smirk. Also the monster Hexxus from FernGully. Those would be the two biggest. He’s a product of his setting and context. Everyone has met Joffrey in some shape or form.

  The toughest role to fill on Thrones was Arya Stark—the crafty, strong-willed young heroine who defies gender stereotypes and endures monumental hardships throughout the series.

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: I despaired for a while that we couldn’t find an Arya. We read more girls for Arya than anyone else. Most child actors in sitcoms, they just have to be cute and snap off one-liners. This part deals with real violence and grief and fear. Three-quarters of the girls we saw were just reciting lines; there was nothing else going on there. It’s a big thing for a ten-year-old to recite those lines, but there was no acting. The rest were kids who obviously had gone to acting classes and some coach had told them they had to emote and they were emoting all over the place. They were all grimacing and rolling their eyes. I’m looking at this saying, “We’re doomed.”

  Then twelve-year-old English actress Maisie Williams, in her second audition for a role ever, recorded a tape playing Arya during her lunch break at school.

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: Holy hell. Her facial features weren’t at all what I had described in the books, but she was perfect. She was Arya! She was alive!

  For Arya’s prim, idealistic sister, Sansa Stark, thirteen-year-old Sophie Turner was urged by her drama teacher to try out for the role. She later said the taping just seemed like “a fun, jokey thing to do.” She didn’t even tell her parents about the role until she made it to the final seven.

  NINA GOLD (casting director): Sophie likes to say we found her in a field somewhere in Warwickshire, which isn’t quite true, but it’s almost true.

  ROBERT STERNE (casting director): We went to her school, and she just clearly from the start had some connection with the material.

  Williams and Turner met for the first time at one of their auditions and were partnered together for a chemistry read.

  MA
ISIE WILLIAMS (Arya Stark): I came out of it thinking: “Even if I don’t get the part of Arya, I want Sophie to get the part of Sansa.”

  DAVID BENIOFF: Maisie and Sophie liked each other right away. There was real chemistry even though the characters are not supposed to like each other at that point. From then on, they would be, like, giggling and laughing together, then the second you say, “Action,” they were at each other’s throats in a completely believable way. Being friends makes it easier for actors to play hostility between them. It was the same with Peter and Lena.

  NINA GOLD: From the first read-through, they just became inseparable.

  Williams and Turner would later get matching tattoos of the date “07.08.09,” commemorating their casting.

  SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark): That date always meant a lot to us, and we always said we were gonna get it done. We’d been filming [season seven] for a week and were having the best time ever, and so we were like, “Fuck it, let’s just do it!”

  English actor Isaac Hempstead Wright had no interest in performing until he joined a drama club at school. He was just ten when he was cast as Bran Stark, the boy who winds up disabled, yet with a mystical destiny.

  ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT (Bran Stark): I had three auditions and then just forgot about it over the summer. I was running around playing football or whatever. Then one day I came out from school and got in my mum’s car and she said, “Congratulations, Bran Stark.” Oh. Cool!

  Scottish actor Richard Madden was twenty-two when he was chosen for the eldest Stark son, Robb. (He shifted his accent to closer match Bean’s Yorkshire dialect.) Like Joffrey, Robb is a character that the showrunners expanded from the books due to the strength of their actor’s performance. “At first we just liked Richard because he was the odds-on favorite for 2009’s Best-Dressed Man in Scotland Award,” Weiss said in the book Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones: Seasons 1 & 2. “He did indeed win, and in addition to his clothes, we got an amazing talent.” Madden would later tell Jimmy Kimmel Live! that he was so destitute at the time he was cast, the role saved him from having to move back in with his parents. (Perhaps he spent too much on clothes?)